Research statistics has established the fact that physical work capacity .declines as a consequence of aging. The question has been raised, however, if this decline is the inevitable result of senescence or merely due to changes in living habits. Creat numbers of people have been observed not to comply with the statistics. One Is inclined to explain such exceptions from the. rule on the basis of extraordinary biological characteristics, but the real reason might be a more adequate balance of essential factors in daily life such as work, rest, tension, play, nutrition, physical activity, and others. As maximum performance capacity is only developed and maintained through hard training, the preservation of an "acceptable" level of work capacity requires frequent exposures to sufficiently high functional demands. Within this concept, two situations under experimental scrutiny am of interests first, physiological parameters, indicative for physical performance capacity, were intra-individuality measured over the years whereby changes of work capacity became apparent as consequence of training, environment, inactivity, disease and retraining. The latter restored the functional adaptability at age 56 nearly to that observed at age 20-30. In the second situation, an individual (age 53)with essential hypertension, a disease considered to be associated with aging processes of the. vascular tissue, has been studied over months with results encouraging the application of an individually devised program of regular activities for the mitigation of such disease.
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